Our Story

The Ageing Revolution was born from a passion for social change and a desire to combat ageism. Leonie and Simon first met when they were both managing Seniors Cards programs in their respective states. It was a meeting of the minds and they started hatching a plan to unearth the stories of older people around Australia. As a graduate of the Social Leadership program delivered by the Benevolent Society, Simon knew that to deliver transformative change, you’ve got to go back to basics and ask generative questions. Storytelling is the perfect technique to both acknowledge the wisdom and experience of older people and combat stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes. Leonie’s previous work in digital storytelling and policymaking fitted perfectly with their plan to build a social enterprise based on a sound evidence base of stories from the coalface.

Their first roadtrip took them on a journey of over 12,000km – all over Queensland, the Northern Territory and outback South Australia and New South Wales – in the beloved 1989 Pajero. The collaboration with the Urban Informatics Lab has seen the work of the Instabooth team integrated into the storytelling process. The roadtrip was a labour of love and the results have been unimaginable. As it turns out, the professional partnership between Leonie and Simon has also turned into a personal one – they now both live and work from their home in West End, consulting and developing strategies and advice for business, community organisations and government, and building ground-breaking partnerships with organisations like the Queensland University of Technology, COTAQ, the Global Resilience Collaborative and Partner2Grow.